


In This Skin

by totallyrandom



Series: Stiles is Trans, Dude [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Bisexual Stiles Stilinski, College Student Stiles, Derek Hale Comforts Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale is Bad at Feelings, Derek Hale is not straight, FTM Stiles Stilinski, Getting Together, LGBTQ, M/M, Pride, Pride Parade, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill, Tattoos, Trans Male Character, Trans Stiles Stilinski, Tumblr Prompt, mostly just by being there, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 12:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11692077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/totallyrandom/pseuds/totallyrandom
Summary: “I just want to be that brave guy marching shirtless down the street all year. You know, really out out.”





	In This Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RyanJames](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyanJames/gifts).



> Tumblr prompt from [@illbeyourgentlemanstory](http://illbeyourgentlemanstory.tumblr.com/): Stiles gets a Pride tattoo and thinks about his old fear of needles.

“But … but … noooooooo. Derek, you have to go with me!”

He shakes his head but doesn’t take his eyes off the paragraph about succubi.

“C’mon, dude.” Stiles plops down next to him, crowding him against the arm of the couch. “I know you usually only put up with me for my Google-fu and periodic life-saving heroics, but I neeeeeed you,” Stiles whines, batting his eyelashes.

He tries to elbow him gently out of his personal space, but Stiles just wilts, draping dramatically over his arm and nearly knocking the bestiary out of his hands. He barely fumbles it safely onto the table.

“I made the appointment months ago, and I’ll lose my deposit if I cancel. I could buy a whole semester of ramen with that $50!”

He scrunches his nose at the idea but says nothing.

“And I can’t even reschedule because Scott extended his trip again, so he won’t even be back from France until the _24th_ , and that’s too laaaaaaaate. It’s bad enough I have to go to Pride by myself this year. I might as well just skip it now.” Stiles full-on pouts, lower lip stuck out and big brown eyes open wide.

“Too late?” He asks after an awkward pause.

“Huh? Oh, I have to make sure the tattoo has time to heal enough so I can put sunblock on it for Pride.”

“Ridiculous. Permanent ink for a 3-hour parade,” he scoffs, shoving Stiles, who flops limply against the cushions.

“It’s not _just_ for the parade,” Stiles protests.

He raises an eyebrow, skeptical.

“It’s … Look, the day after Pride always sucks, you know?” Stiles rolls his eyes. “I mean, _you_ don’t actually know. But it does, dude. Pride is … bright and shiny and happy and perfect. Well, I mean, not _really_. It’s kinda racist. And they usually forget the T in LGB _T_. And if someone’s with someone of a different gender people scowl as though bi people don’t exist either--so I get doubly forgotten with the _BT_.”

He forgets to listen for a minute.  
  
“ … fucking corporate sponsorships. But, you know, it’s a chance for a whole mess of queer folks to get together and remind everyone else--and ourselves--how many of us there are and that we’re not gonna fucking hide. Even if that’s not always true. But, I mean, compared to real life Pride’s _awesome_!”

He just waits for Stiles to come back around to the point.

Stiles moans, “And then the next day it’s back to being just another fucking day of hate and discrimination and microaggressions and fear, but now with glitter in places it was never meant to be.”

He cringes.

“I just want to hold onto a piece of happy, fuck-you Pride for when I’m having a shitty day; is that so much to ask, man?!”

He sees the fight drain out of him.

Stiles is quiet for a few minutes, head half-buried in the armrest, before mumbling, “I just want to be that brave guy marching shirtless down the street all year. You know, really _out_ out.”

He squints, forehead wrinkling. “Out out?”

“You know, visibly trans or whatever.” Stiles throws his head back, staring at the ceiling. “Like, the tattoo’ll make being out the default. And I won’t have to tell people over and over and over. Or have people say I’ve been lying by not telling them.”

Stiles rolls his eyes dramatically. “I know I should feel grateful that I blend in. People usually don’t know unless I’m at the beach or whatever. Because I don’t generally walk around shirtless, unlike _some_ people.” Stiles nudges his foot.

“And it can be nice to blend in. But also not.” Stiles’s voice drops to a whisper. “This’ll make me be brave. It’ll have to be a conscious choice each time I want to cover it up.”

“Ok?”

Stiles clears his throat and sits up straight. “I just wanna do it. Like, get over the last of these fears and shit. Of needles and pain and, I dunno, openness or whatever.”

The grin looks forced and he can hear Stiles’s heart racing, but Stiles’s voice is steady. “I already got rid of a _couple_ of the biggest things that were in my way anyway.”

He chuckles at the way Stiles is pointing to his chest with both thumbs, but he can hear the regret in his own voice as he tells Stiles, “They’ll stop when you pass out.”

Stiles scoffs. “No way, dude. _Old me_ fainted. _Old me_ was squeamish. New Stiles survived major surgery! And, and, and those T shots are fucking huge, man.” Stiles holds his hands a foot apart.

He grabs Stiles’s arms and drags his wrists closer until his palms touch.

Stiles shakes him off. “Nope. Needles and blood and pain can’t stop me anymore, Derek. Been there; done that; got the really-slowly-fading scars to fucking prove it.”

“You won’t even look when Scott gives you the shots. You were unconscious for the surgery.”

Stiles scowls but doesn’t deny it.

“This is hundreds of needle jabs, Stiles.”

“Details, details. I can do this, Derek. I will. It’s ... important.”

He frowns. “Is this a macho thing? You think you need to put yourself through pain to prove that you can deal with pain?”

Stiles just looks at him and deadpans, “I always forget: are you the pot or the kettle?”

“I don't ... Shut up, Stiles. Just … explain it better.”

“It’s hard to explain it if I’m shutting up.” Stiles’s smug smile falls away quickly and he stays quiet a moment, biting at a hangnail before blowing out a long breath. “Shit, dude. I don’t know. I just need to … This is like … the last step to .... I just …  Ok …,” he trails off, blinking rapidly a few times before continuing.

“I don’t know, Derek. I just look in the mirror and even though everything looks right now, I ... I still don’t look complete?” Stiles sighs and starts picking at the same hangnail.

“Dude, I … I can’t _stand_ being uncomfortable in this skin anymore. And I won’t let _anyone_ tell me I’m a dork or a girl or scrawny or weak,” he says through a clenched jaw, “even if it’s my own fucking body saying it.”

He nods. He can understand that, at least.

“Besides,” Stiles says, bumping shoulders with him, “it won’t even be super painful ’cause you’ll help with the pain-drain shit, right?”

He slaps at Stiles’s hands when the hangnail starts bleeding and looks Stiles dead in the eyes. “None of us think you’re weak.”

Stiles's sigh is muffled because he's sucking the blood off his finger. “That’s not how it works, dude,” he mumbles.

He pulls Stiles’s hand away again. “What?”

“My childhood insecurity gives zero fucks what you think of me now. And it's not about the pain, anyway. That's not the point.” His laugh is not a happy sound.

“Why something so permanent?”

Stiles yanks his hand free and fiddles with the hem of his t-shirt for a minute. “I don’t want to be able to take it off.”

He just looks at Stiles, waiting for the rest.

Stiles bites his lip and looks away. “I’m not sure how to explain it any more without being an asshole.”

He snorts. Stiles scrunches his mouth and huffs out a loud breath through his nose.

He picks up a napkin from the coffee table, waving it in front of Stiles’s face. “You look like a pouting bull.”  

Stiles pounces him, wrestling the napkin out of his hands and wadding it up to chuck at his head. “All of a sudden, I’m significantly less worried about being an asshole.”

He just rolls his eyes and pushes Stiles toward the other end of the couch.

Stiles takes a long breath and then speaks quietly, running a finger across his own palm, tracing the scarred life line. “You know, I’m actually a totally different person than I was five years ago. And not just because I’m older and wiser.”

He unsuccessfully stifles a laugh.

Stiles ignores the insult. “No, dude, really. Like … cells are growing and dividing and dying all the time. And this goes on and on and eventually I’m a whole new person, whole new body.” Stiles lets out a bitter laugh. “And that’s not even counting that weird shit with the Nogitsune. _Fuck_.” Stiles clenches his hands briefly before he shakes them out and starts tracing along the smooth skin on his other palm as he talks.

“So, you know, I’m all new and everything. Yay. But still I can’t escape the cumulative effect of everything that’s happened to me, either. Scar tissue is pretty permanent. And also the new cells don’t change the … the shape of me. They’re just a new version replacing what was already there.”

Stiles sweeps a hand down from head to feet. “It’s all still there on my skin, in my bones. All the lucky wins, all the collateral damage. The hard work and training and hugs and punches and I-love-yous and ridicule and broken bones and cuts and narrow escapes. Just … so many fucking scars I never wanted, man.” Stiles’s bitter words silde into a small smile as he runs his hands down his flat chest. “But, then, there’s also two scars that I did want, too.”

Stiles shakes his head but presses on. “All the best and worst things that have ever happened to me … I’m stuck with them. No matter how many times I shed my skin and become a whole new me.”

He’s confused but doesn’t interrupt.

“So, anyway, for boring folks like _moi_ who don’t have weird magic instant healing powers, it still takes a while for all those cells to be replaced. And the central nervous system--like the nerves and brain and crap--those cells don’t get replaced ever, actually. Which I guess is maybe why I can’t fucking forget all this shit. Like the mess with the pixies? Ugh.” Stiles shakes it off. “Uh, lenses don’t ever get replaced either.” Stiles traces the scar that almost cost him an eye. “So I got damn lucky there, all things considered.”

He tries to avoid thinking about how that scar ends so, so close to Stiles’s jugular.

“Most cells do, though. But the different kinds of cells get replaced at different rates? So bones take like a decade. Like ... I still have bone cells from the year Jackson broke my fucking Yellow Power Ranger. And fat cells? I mean, not that you even have fat cells anyway, but those are almost a decade too. But then it’s only like a month for new skin cells.”

Stiles sighs. “Even so, I’m still stuck with all these fucking scars, you know? And they’ll get lighter eventually, yeah, but they won’t go away ever, even after I’ve made all new skin hundreds of times.”[1]

He looks down at his own smooth hands and arms. He doesn’t know what it’s like to wear a permanent reminder of every trauma he’s endured. If he did, he’d be nothing but scar tissue head-to-toe.

“Sometimes I feel so fucking old, Derek. Like, my ankle just started clicking this week? I think from where I broke it _3 years ago_. I just ... It sucks that none of it really ever goes away. Not all the way. And I can, like, choose whether to hide most of it under sleeves and collars or just walk through the world letting everyone see exactly who I am: a fucking survivor.”

He thinks Stiles is finally coming back around to the point.

“And it’s scary, yeah, to be so … bare with strangers. But also if I don’t hide it, then I don’t have to go through the bullshit of telling people my story. They can just look at me and sort-of know. It’s so obvious I’ve been through some shit, even though they’d never fucking believe the details.”

Isn’t that the fucking truth, he thinks.

“And the staring isn’t great sometimes, sure, but also it’s a relief, kind of? With all this,” Stiles says, waving toward his face, “I don’t have to scowl and growl at everyone to make people back off.” Stiles puts his fingers over his eyebrows to mimic how he apparently think Derek looks when he’s angry.

He huffs and kicks at Stiles’s foot with a fake sneer.

“I don’t need to wear my anger on my face for them to see I’m not an easy victim. Or to know I’m--I dunno--damaged or whatever. And to not have to pretend … not being _able_ to hide? It’s … just … freeing.” Stiles swallows hard and continues on in a whisper. “It makes me have to be brave, even when I’m weak and want to hide.”

He can’t remember what free feels like, but he only says, “I’ve never seen you run and hide from anything. Not even when you should.”

“Whatever.” Stiles picks at a cuticle. “I have all these marks that other people gave me. Ones I had no say in. But I also have these other two that I _chose_. They’re the newest and biggest and darkest. And even though other people don’t know, they’re right up front where I see them every day. And they’re as much a part of who I am now as all the others.”

He nods.

“These two scars are like my fuck-you to Beacon Hills, I guess. For trying to kill me all the damn time. Or to the universe for trying to tell me who I should be. How I should be.” Stiles grimaces. “I don’t know … somehow these two make the others easier to look at? To see my body as a whole, finally, instead of just a topographic map pinpointing each disaster.” 

Stiles lets his head fall back and stares up at the ceiling. “And, yeah, I’m fucking grateful I survived it all. And damn proud of this body, finally. Not just how it looks but the shit it can do now. And the scars show all the times I used it to help keep people safe. I’m not ashamed of them. But that doesn’t mean I want to remember each fucking horror every day when I get dressed. So now I can just, like, focus on these two biggest scars and feel ... I don’t know, centered? … and like _me_ and … maybe in control of my destiny or something.”

Feeling in control of anything is definitely a foreign concept to him. But he just nods again and says, “Good. I still don’t see how that means getting a tattoo.”

Stiles just looks at him.

“What?”

“C’mon. You have to know what a tattoo can mean, dude. Why I … You’ve done this. You have a giant. fucking. tattoo. on your back, Derek. And it’s not some happy fucking mermaid, it’s your ...” Stiles squints at him. “They even had to fucking burn the tattoo in afterward to get it to stay! And you did it anyway. Because it mattered. … Because you … You have to know why. Do I really have to spell it out like …? Fuck, man.”

Stiles scrubs at his face before continuing, quieter now. “Derek, I know what it means. Yours. Like, how can you not get why I need to do this?”

He can’t help but snarl when he says, “I hate mine. Every day.”

Stiles startles, gaping at him.

“I got it in New York. When we finally stayed put.” He presses on, ignoring the hitch in his voice. “It was two hours of pain, but that’s just pain. The constant buzzing was worse. Every second I was about to burst out of my skin and run away.”

Stiles winces but doesn’t say anything.

“It was exhausting to sit there and have to hold it in.”

Stiles nods.

He lets out a slow breath, ducking his head. “Still, it was the calmest I’d felt in months. … The pain got me out of my head.”

“Oh.” Stiles rubs at a stain on his jeans.

“But it faded. So Laura torched it for me. After she yelled at me first. And then cried in front of me for … She hadn’t before then,” he sighs. “When she was holding the flame to my skin ... it felt like penance. For everything I ruined. My mistakes. It was good to hurt for what I’d done. It felt right to burn in that flame for what I caused. It was over sooner than it should’ve.”

“Derek …”

He shakes his head. “I didn’t know that’s what I was doing when I got it. I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand anything. I was just sad and guilty and angry and it just felt right.”

Stiles nods grimly.

“I wanted to honor them. To carry our family history with me where no one could take it away. The pictures all burned but this was a part of them I could never lose again, no matter how I fucked up. It felt like closure.” He clears his throat. “Then Laura came home with a small matching one on the back of her neck the next week and made me burn it in for her. It was … ”

Stiles starts to reach out but he flinches and Stiles shoves his hands between his knees instead.

“She wanted to show me we could still be a family, I guess. Just the two of us. But that’s because she didn’t know.”

Stiles frowns.

“After a couple years it started to feel less like punishment again. More like forgiveness, even though I still never told her about ...” He closes his eyes and swallows hard. “Then I came back here and Laura was …” He shakes his head. “Now it’s just a reminder again. A brand of my all my mistakes.”

Stiles gasps.

He shrugs. “I know you want the tattoo now for celebration or defiance, but what about later? What if something happens and the meaning changes?”

Stiles wrinkles his nose. “It’s just a ... It’s not gonna change.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Ok, whatever. But it wouldn’t be the end of the world. I mean, I can always get it lasered off.” Stiles laughs grimly. “The removal scar can just blend in with all my others.” Stiles squints at him. “Why’d you never you get yours off?”

He shrugs. “Not sure I can.”

“You have to stop punishing yourself for all that, Derek,” Stiles whispers.

“No, I don’t know if it _can_ be removed. It was set with fire. How would burning it again get rid of it?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

“You’d probably have to, like, cut the whole chunk out and let it grow back.” Stiles shivers. “Shit, man. That’s … shiiiiiit. Uh, but I still want one, though? Sorry.”

He just shrugs. He tried.

“You’re sure you can’t come help?”

He shakes his head. It’s not that he’d mind pulling the pain into himself. He’s done it about a million times already, a lot of those for Stiles even. But for this, he just can’t. He wouldn’t be able to block out the noise. Or the smell of Stiles’s blood. He can’t.

Stiles nods. “Yeah, no, it’s ok. I get it. I can … I’ll just wait and make Scott go with me for my birthday and then I’ll have it in plenty of time for next year. It’s fine. The deposit wasn’t that big even, really. I was just being a cheap bastard.”

He exhales, grateful that Stiles isn’t pushing it. He doesn’t know how long he’d be able to keep saying no to Stiles. And he really needs to about this.

“And, uh, I’ll look into it for you. I’ll find out if you can …” Stiles waves a hand over his shoulder.

He just nods again, feeling a little raw.

Stiles slaps his hands on his thighs. “Ok, so this conversation has been _terrible_ and now I’m just gonna go.”

Stiles heaves himself to his feet and turns away, but he grabs Stiles by the wrist and gently tugs, only letting go when Stiles is facing him again. “What was it going to be?”

“Huh? The tattoo?” Stiles laughs. “Well, you’ll be glad to know Dad talked me out of ‘queer as in fuck you’ because apparently that would make it hard for me to get a respectable job or something.” Stiles rolls his eyes.

He’s pretty sure Stiles isn’t lying. “Don’t you already have that on a shirt?”

Stiles laughs. “Right. So, yeah, uh, just the trans flag? Maybe it’s dumb. The colors are so light, you know? I don’t how it’ll turn out--if anyone’d even be able to see it. Or how long it’d last before fading. They might not even agree to do it because it’s so light. And I don’t how many people even recognize that flag, anyway, but I don’t just want the rainbow. And more people know what it is now, I think. I hope. … I don’t know … It just seems like this would be easier than always having to tell people?”[2]

“Where?”

“Huh? Oh, I thought arm at first, you know.” Stiles slaps himself on the ball of his left shoulder. “But then if I want everyone to see it--and _I_ don’t buy tank tops in bulk--so, forearm’s better. And closer to my elbow so I can roll my sleeves down if I really have to.”

His gaze catches on Stiles’s arm before looking away.

“Hey, I guess since I’m waiting now I have plenty of time to take that trip to North Carolina and Texas I never wanted to, right?”[3]

“Austin’s pretty nice,” he shrugs.

“Yeah? Maybe you can take me on a roadtrip to visit closets in all of America’s most transphobic hellholes, as a last hurrah.” Stiles chuckles. “Yeah, ok. I’ll just wait. But I have to do soooooooooomething for Pride,” he sighs.

He watches Stiles’s face contort into a slow series of thinking-faces: lips sucked in, then pushed out like a duck. Chewing on his bottom lip then sliding into sucking the top lip in under the bottom. Chewing his right cheek before moving on to pursing his mouth to the left and right and back. He finally settles on squinting at Derek with a hum. “How are you at face painting? I can’t trust Dad with it.”

“I might paint a dick on your face.”

“Well, that would make me veeeeeeeery popular at Pride, wouldn’t it! Scott’d probably paint a dick on me, too, if I gave him a chance, so I can’t really fault you for that. But really ...”

“Ok, I can … I’ll ... ” His voice comes out in an embarrassing croak. Stiles gives him a concerned look, but he just takes a deep breath and then another and stands to look Stiles in the eye, trying not to blush. “Ok. I’ll paint your flag … if you’ll paint mine.”

“Your … uuuuuuuuh …” Stiles’s eyes go wide for a moment and then he’s blinking repeatedly, mouth slack. Stiles swallows a few times and doesn’t quite pull off casual when he tells him, “I mean, yeah, sure. Yeah. Good plan.” Stiles actually shoots finger guns at him before looking down at them and clasping them together instead. “Uh, you’ll, uh, have to tell me what colors to buy?”[4]  

He ducks his head to hide his blush from Stiles. “Not sure yet exactly.”

Stiles clears his throat. “Oh. Well, it’s not for a couple weeks yet, so ...”

He steps toward Stiles and says, barely above a whisper, “Maybe you can help me figure it out?”

When Stiles rests a hand on his chest, he covers it with his own, nodding when Stiles promises, “Yeah, we’ll figure it all out together.”

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [Ryan](http://archiveofourown.org/users/RyanJames) for the inspiration, feedback, and encouragement.
> 
> [1] [http://book.bionumbers.org/how-quickly-do-different-cells-in-the-body-replace-themselves](http://book.bionumbers.org/how-quickly-do-different-cells-in-the-body-replace-themselves/)
> 
> [2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_flags#/media/File:Transgender_Pride_flag.svg>
> 
> [3] <http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nc-bathroom-bill-lawsuit-20170721-story.html>
> 
> [http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-texas-bathroom-bill-oil-20170731-story.html](http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-texas-bathroom-bill-oil-20170731-story.html%20)
> 
> [4] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_symbols>


End file.
